When Asia Minor and Syria were conquered by the Turks this access to Jerusalem was cut off. In 1076 (Al-Ghazali was then eighteen years old) they massacred three thousand of these Christian people and their subsequent rule was relentless in its tyranny. We read that “the venerable Patriarch was dragged by the hair along the streets, and cast into a dungeon; the clergy of every sect were insulted; and the unhappy pilgrims were made to suffer every indignity and abuse.” This treatment of Christian pilgrims produced a storm of indignation and anger throughout the West. Peter the Hermit himself visited Jerusalem and returned to Europe to arouse the nations. The result was the first Crusade, in which Pope Urban II coöperated. Three hundred thousand half-armed, half-naked peasants forced their way across Europe along the Rhine and the Danube. Only one-third of their number reached the shores of Asia. There they were utterly destroyed and only a pyramid of bones remained to tell of their fate. The Crusade under Godfrey of Bouillon was a well-appointed military expedition embracing the flower of Europe. There are said to have been mustered in the plains of Bithynia one hundred thousand horsemen in full armour and six hundred thousand footmen. These numbers may be exaggerated, and pestilence and famine thinned their ranks, but in less than three years they had attained the great object of their expedition. In 1097 they laid siege to Nicea and captured it. They advanced against Antioch and after seven weary months laid siege to the city. In 1099 they advanced on Jerusalem and after a siege of forty days the holy city surrendered. “The merciless Franks did not fail to inflict a terrible vengeance for their own sufferings and the indignities which had been heaped upon their religion and their race. The Jews were burned in their synagogues; and seventy thousand Moslems were put to the sword. For three days the city was given up to indiscriminate pillage and massacre, until a pestilence was bred by the putrefaction of the slain.” Soon Godfrey and his successors extended their dominions until only four cities, Aleppo, Damascus, Hamath, and Hums remained in the possession of the Moslems in Syria. Everywhere the followers of the Prophet were filled with grief and shame and with a great longing to wipe away the disgrace which had fallen on their religion.